第41章

Notwithstanding the incompetency of so diminished a pittance,the daily task of the soldier and convict continued unaltered.I never contemplated the labours of these men without finding abundant cause of reflection on the miseries which our nature can overcome.Let me for a moment quit the cold track of narrative.Let me not fritter away by servile adaptation those reflections and the feelings they gave birth to.Let me transcribe them fresh as they arose,ardent and generous,though hopeless and romantic.

I every day see wretches pale with disease and wasted with famine,struggle against the horror's of their situation.How striking is the effect of subordination;how dreadful is the fear of punishment!The allotted task is still performed,even on the present reduced subsistence.The blacksmith sweats at the sultry forge,the sawyer labours pent-up in his pit and the husbandman turns up the sterile glebe.Shall I again hear arguments multiplied to violate truth,and insult humanity!Shall I again be told that the sufferings of the wretched Africans are indispensable for the culture of our sugar colonies;that white men are incapable of sustaining the heat of the climate!I have been in the West Indies.I have lived there.

I know that it is a rare instance for the mercury in the thermometer to mount there above 90degrees;and here I scarcely pass a week in summer without seeing it rise to 100degrees;sometimes to 105;nay,beyond even that burning altitude.

But toil cannot be long supported without adequate refreshment.The first step in every community which wishes to preserve honesty should be to set the people above want.The throes of hunger will ever prove too powerful for integrity to withstand.Hence arose a repetition of petty delinquencies,which no vigilance could detect,and no justice reach.Gardens were plundered,provisions pilfered,and the Indian corn stolen from the fields where it grew for public use.Various were the measures adopted to check this depredatory spirit.Criminal courts,either from the tediousness of their process,or from the frequent escape of culprits from their decision,were seldomer convened than formerly.The governor ordered convict offenders either to be chained together or to wear singly a large iron collar with two spikes projecting from it,which effectually hindered the party from concealing it under his shirt;and thus shackled,they were compelled to perform their quota of work.

May,1791.Had their marauding career terminated here,humanity would have been anxious to plead in their defence;but the natives continued to complain of being robbed of spears and fishing tackle.A convict was at length taken in the fact of stealing fishing-tackle from Daringa,the wife of Colbee.

The governor ordered that he should be severely flogged in the presence of as many natives as could be assembled,to whom the cause of punishment should be explained.Many of them,of both sexes,accordingly attended.

Arabanoo's aversion to a similar sight has been noticed;and if the behaviour of those now collected be found to correspond with it,it is,I think,fair to conclude that these people are not of a sanguinary and implacable temper.Quick indeed of resentment,but not unforgiving of injury.

There was not one of them that did not testify strong abhorrence of the punishment and equal sympathy with the sufferer.The women were particularly affected;Daringa shed tears,and Barangaroo,kindling into anger,snatched a stick and menaced the executioner.The conduct of these women,on this occasion,was exactly deive of their characters.

The former was ever meek and feminine,the latter fierce and unsubmissive.

On the first of May,many allotments of ground were parcelled out by the governor to convicts whose periods of transportation were expired,and who voluntarily offered to become settlers in the country.The terms on which they settled,and their progress in agriculture,will be hereafter set forth.